


Dream Dust

by Elexica



Category: Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters (Anime & Manga)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, M/M, Pre-Slash, Violetshipping Secret Santa (Yu-Gi-Oh), Violetshipping Secret Santa 2020, dark academia aesthetic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-27
Updated: 2020-12-27
Packaged: 2021-03-11 05:42:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,069
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28370064
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Elexica/pseuds/Elexica
Summary: Seto learns the meaning of yearning when stuck next to hockey player Joey for a poetry course.
Relationships: Jounouchi Katsuya | Joey Wheeler/Kaiba Seto
Comments: 18
Kudos: 34





	Dream Dust

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Pappillon](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pappillon/gifts).



> For my brilliant, beautiful, wonderful wife/rival, Pappillon/Sumisuchan! 
> 
> I hope you enjoy, and happy holidays! <3 
> 
> . . .   
> In this AU, Kaiba and Joey are both students at Yale, in New Haven, Connecticut. Because the aesthetic. Some dark academia for my goth academic waiful.

Gather out of star-dust

Earth-dust,

Cloud-dust,

And splinters of hail,

One handful of dream-dust

Not for sale.

“Dream Dust” by Langston Hughes

. . .

Brooding in the dimly lit, gothic library on campus didn’t make Seto _happy_ per se, but it absolutely felt _right_.

The rain struck violently at the ornate windows, threatening the wrought iron spirals holing them in place. The pages of Seto’s book were painted a soft blue grey in the light that echoed through the clouds.

His solitude was poetic, beautiful in its own way. Though he preferred his computer science projects and thrived on being neck deep in code, cleverly building something incredible from keystrokes and his innate brilliance, even he had to admit that there was something to this—perched in an antique oxblood leather armchair, long and delicate pale fingers flipping through yellowed pages of poetry printed hundreds of years ago.

Initially, he had loathed the general education requirement that demanded his disciplined engineer’s mind be straddled with disjointed phrases and the other nonsensical burdens that English 247: Lyric Theory placed on its students. But this, texts of devastated writers, stories of pain and plagues from eons passed, this he could make work.

Indeed, the aesthetic was enough to carry him through the first four weeks of being trapped in the lecture hall with Joey Wheeler. 

In a word, Wheeler was the _worst._ In two words, he was the _absolute worst_. 

Joey was a scholarship student, which Kaiba could have respected if it was on account of his academic merit, or perhaps a brilliant stroke of strategy, or any intellectual capacity whatsoever.

But the only reason that Joey was allowed to walk the same hallowed halls as Seto, tread along the magnificent stone structures, receive the same renowned instruction, was that Wheeler was really, really good at hitting a hockey puck with a stick.

So every Tuesday and Thursday, as Seto was already in his seat, leather-bound notebook flush against the desk, thousand-dollar fountain pen prepared to bleed literary analysis, Joey would roll in five minutes after class had started. Wheeler would slough off his enormous, stinky hockey bag onto the floor, snag the seat next to Seto which was always _quite intentionally empty_ , and plop down. As if he was in a movie theater, Joey would drop Hot Cheetos into his mouth mid-lecture and chew them so loudly Kaiba couldn’t hear anything else.

If Seto admittedly glared a little at Joey’s lips as he licked the red dust from his calloused fingers, it was only a testament to how _distracting_ the other man and his coarse ways were. What an _ignorant rube_ , wasting his fine education—and dragging Seto’s learning experience down with him. And that greedy tongue, lapping at the fine red dust in the harsh fluorescent lights of the classroom… just another element of the man’s frustrating forces.

For four weeks, Seto could endure it. He’d tolerated far worse assaults on his sanity. One _god-awful_ classmate, with stupid messy blond hair, vacant brown eyes brimming with a sort of dumb-friendliness that made Seto’s stomach churn, and a post-hockey practice musk that sent Seto on edge… he could deal with this. He wouldn’t let it take away from his experience of T.S. Eliot’s “The Wasteland.”

This… uncultured disaster of sweatpants and his Yale Bulldog’s jersey that revealed strong arms, muscled and occasionally still glistening from exertion … it would not stop Seto from fully absorbing the power and beauty of Emily Dickinson’s writings.

The fifth week posed a more significant problem. 

“The beauty of lyricism is that with a careful eye, any number of themes can be detected in any prolific poet’s work,” the professor instructed. “For the final project, worth fifty percent of your grade, I want you to look outside the box, and outside yourself. With the person you are sitting closest to, please form groups of two. The come to the front of the class and each of you will select a slip: first, the poet whose work you will be analyzing. Then your teammate will select a topic from the second bowl. The assignment is to co-write a fifteen page paper on this theme in the poet’s work.”

Joey, having wandered in late yet again, had sat down next to Kaiba because he was at the end of the third row. Kaiba, because he intimidated all of the other students with his brilliance (and dower energy), had no one willing to sit even remotely close, not that he wanted any one to do so. As a result, though Joey did his utmost to make eye contact with literally anyone else in the class—they were stuck together. 

“Don't even think about writing the paper, moron,” Kaiba whispered harshly to the blond. 

Joey just shrugged, “Ya said it like an insult, but usually I gotta ask someone to do my homework, so go ham.”

This flippant attitude riled Kaiba up even further, heat building in his chest, lips pursed. If his GPA wasn’t on the line, maybe he really would force the jock to write the damn thing.

When the professor pointed at the duo, they got up in unison and knocked into each other, falling in a tangle of arms and legs. Kaiba’s chest pressed into Joey’s, and he could feel the other man’s heartbeat pulsing through him. He could see Joey’s long eyelashes, warm brown irises and shocked pupils staring surprised into his. Seto struggled to his feet without extending an arm to aid his new teammate.

Kaiba didn’t give Joey the chance to approach the first bowl, broad black-sweater clad shoulders edging him out. With a sure hand, Kaiba plunged in and ripped the poet’s name from the bowl.

The shred of paper read “Langston Hughes.”

Kaiba could work with this.

Joey reached his hand in the second bowl, wiggled it about theatrically, pretended that it was sucking him in—which made everyone in the class laugh, except for Kaiba—and revealed the second half of the prompt.

“Longing.”

“Not like you’d know much about that, rich boy,” Joey laughed as they returned to their seats. “You’ve got everything you want, I bet.”

Kaiba’s eyes followed Joey’s fingers as they dropped the next snack into his lewdly open mouth. 

“As always, you know nothing, Wheeler,” Kaiba scoffed, trying desperately to turn his attention back to the professor’s presentation on the impact of meter on beat poetry.

**Author's Note:**

> Image credit. This is a remix of the wikicommons work Interior of Sterling Memorial Library - Yale University - New Haven - CT - USA - 02 (6942583186).jpg by Adam Jones from Kelowna, BC, Canada. It bears a creative commons license allowing remix under the attribution and share alike requirements. I have remixed the color and tone of the work through filters and color adjustment, as well as adding text.   
> https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Interior_of_Sterling_Memorial_Library_-_Yale_University_-_New_Haven_-_CT_-_USA_-_02_(6942583186).jpg  
> The resulting remix is therefore licensed under the same terms.  
> Enjoy!


End file.
